While just about every computer user owns their own printer and is capable of producing high quality documents, the ability to produce such documents in high volume and with special finishing features, such as binding, is still within the purview of the commercial print shops and corporate copy departments. High volume, finished production of documents is typically referred to as production printing. A production printer is a printing device capable of rapid production of large volumes of documents. Typically these printers have high paper handling capacity, the ability to draw on multiple media types from multiple sources and the ability to automatically finish a document such as by adding a binding. Despite the automation provided by the production printer and the proliferation of computer technology, especially in the area of desktop publishing, production printing is still a complicated and often manual process.
In a typical print shop, customers bring in original documents which they want turned into a finished product such as a bound booklet, a tri-fold brochure or a tabbed three ring bound notebook. In addition, they typically need a large volume of the finished product, for example, one thousand brochures. The combination of the original documents plus the instructions for producing the finished product is called a xe2x80x9cjobxe2x80x9d. The documents can be brought in either in hard copy or electronic form, such as on floppy disk, compact disc or tape or can be transmitted to the print shop over a network such as the Internet.
After handing over the documents to the clerk, the customer relays his instructions for preparing the finished product. The clerk will note these instructions on a xe2x80x9cticketxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cjob ticketxe2x80x9d. The job ticket is typically a piece of paper with all of the instructions written on it for producing the finished product. As mentioned above, this is known as job. The job will then be handed to an operator, who runs the production printer, to produce the finished output. The operator""s job is to prepare the document for production, load the appropriate materials, such as paper stock and binding materials, into the production printer and ensure that the finished output is correct.
While the job of the operator seems simple, there are many issues which quickly complicate it. Often, the documents provided by a customer are not ready to be run on the production printer. Some documents provided by a customer are merely raw manuscripts requiring basic formatting, such as margins, typography, etc. Other documents may be formatted but such formatting might not take into account the requested binding. For example, the text of the document is too close to the margin, therefore, when the finished product is bound, some of the text will be obscured. Some documents, such as books, require special care so that, for example, the first page of every chapter appears on the front of a page, also known as imposition. Other forms of imposition include booklet/pamphlet imposition or n-up imposition. Or the customer may bring in multiple documents and ask that these xe2x80x9cchaptersxe2x80x9d be assembled into a book, with a cover and binding.
Other issues which complicate the production printing job are determining and loading the correct media into the production printer. Often, jobs will require many different paper types, such as different stock weights or different colors. In addition, some jobs require the insertion of tab stock at specific points within the document. Still other jobs may require the adding of a bates number or other annotation to the document.
With such a complicated production process to produce finished output, errors are bound to occur, such as loading the wrong paper stock in the printer or setting a margin too close to a binding. Production printers run at very high speeds, often producing output greater than 1 page per second therefore, errors in the finished output may not be caught before a significant amount of time and resources have been wasted.
Accordingly, there is a need for an efficient system and method for managing the production printing workflow.
The present invention is defined by the following claims, and nothing in this section should be taken as a limitation on those claims. By way of introduction, the preferred embodiments described below relate to a system for efficient use of first and second print resources operative to receive information to be printed and generate printed output. Each of the first and second print resources is characterized by respective capabilities. The system comprises: a receiver for receiving a document, the document comprising a first portion and a second portion, the first and second portions comprising information to be printed and characterized by a pre-determined ordering and further wherein the first portion is optimized for a first of the respective capabilities of the first and second print resources and the second portion is optimized for a second of the respective capabilities of the first and second print resources, the first and second portions further comprising an attribute operative to indicate which of the respective capabilities they are optimized for; a resource allocator coupled with the receiver and the first and second print resources and operative to receive the document and read the attribute from each of the first and second portions and route each of the first and second portions to the corresponding print resource with the corresponding of the first and second of the respective capabilities to generate printed output; and an assembler coupled with the first and second print resources and operative to receive the printed output from the first and second print resources and assemble a finished document according to the pre-determined ordering.
The preferred embodiments further relate to a method for efficiently using first and second print resources. Each of the first and second print resources is characterized by respective capabilities. The method comprises: receiving a document, the document comprising a first portion and a second portion, the first and second portions comprising information to be printed and characterized by a pre-determined ordering and further wherein the first portion is optimized for a first of the respective capabilities of the first and second print resources and the second portion is optimized for a second of the respective capabilities of the first and second print resources, the first and second portions further comprising an attribute operative to indicate which of the respective capabilities they are optimized for; indicating in the attribute which of the respective capabilities of the first and second print resource should be used for each of the first and second portions; transmitting the document to a resource allocator; reading the attribute from the first and second portion by the resource allocator; routing each of the first and second portion to one of the first and second print resource by the resource allocator based on the indicated capability and the respective capabilities; generating printed output from each of the first and second print resources of the first and second portions; and assembling a finished document from the printed output according to the pre-determined ordering.